19 Purchase Street Read online

  Still, Gainer needed tax help, some secondary business that would help him keep more of his money by seeming to use up a lot of it.

  Several such propositions found him. Most suitable was the one proposed by Ruth Applegate, a woman who had worked part-time with Gainer back in his library days. She was fifty, not attractive, but persistently pleasant, an honest brightness about her. Her squat, waistless figure gave the impression that she might very well be awkward, even clumsy. However, she was surprisingly agile and had quick decisive hands. Applegate, as Gainer called her and she rather enjoyed being called, wasn’t married, never had been, wasn’t looking to be. The one thing that occupied and preoccupied her, that she believed in right down to her bones, was herbs.

  Herbs.

  Gainer opened a shop for her. The ground floor of a narrow brownstone on East Sixty-second Street just around the corner from Lexington Avenue. The rather small place was decorated in weathered barn-wood and used brick. Not too well-lighted, the atmosphere was cozy, special. One would feel good about having discovered it. Shelf above shelf of antique, glass-lidded jars contained the various herbs and displayed their names.

  Some were familiar. Sorrel and coriander, fennel, cumin, saffron and sarsaparilla.

  Then there was maidenhair and pennyroyal, stargrass, sweetflag, coltsfoot, devil’s-claw, beggar’s-blanket and witch’s-candle. Wake-robin, deer’s-tongue, snakeroot and even one called Lizzie run-in-the-hedge.

  For cooking, for teas, medicaments and cosmetics, but by no means limited to those uses. There seemed to be a herb good for just about every imaginable thing.

  Gainer, with Applegate’s approval, gave the shop an easy name:

  HERBIES

  Announced in handlettering on a swinging wooden sign outside, just left of the entrance.

  It was a small, important pleasure for Gainer to go to the shop and breathe. The air, its equivocal fragrance, seemed to reach all the usually obscured portions of his senses. Applegate took his frequent visits as indications of interest or perhaps concern. He reassured her, told her not to worry about overhead and the lack of customers. He was delighted with the shop. Truly was.

  Herbs and handicapping.

  NORMA and Gainer

  Now they sat in Gainer’s top floor apartment on Roosevelt Island. The sun was weakening, could almost be directly looked at. Before long it would turn its cast from amber to orange and like the mere disc the Egyptians believed it was, drop behind the New York skyline.

  Norma had her shoes off and feet up on the same chair as Gainer. Their toes were nearly touching. The tomato and Brie sandwiches Norma had made were gone but the plates remained on their laps. Gainer wet his second finger with his tongue and dabbed up some crumbs.

  “Still hungry?” Norma asked.

  He was.

  “Why don’t I call and have the Foodworks pack a basket for you? You know, that place on Third where I got the lemon mousse you liked so much.”

  “Don’t bother, I’ll stop somewhere along the way.”

  Norma took Gainer’s plate and her own into the kitchen, from which she said, “I love you, Drew.”

  He was noticing a sixty-some-footer going down river as white and brassy as could be with a party aboard and gulls tagging along in hopes of leftovers. “I love you too,” he said. Was what he felt in his throat a fragment of little boy crying?

  Norma returned to him with a suggestion. She’d go to Zurich, take care of business in a couple of hours and catch the first available flight out. That way she’d be back tomorrow night, late, but back.

  Gainer didn’t want her to put herself through that, the rush and strain.

  “All right,” she said, “tell you what. I’ll stay overnight in Zurich and fly back Thursday. When I get in I’ll cab straight to LaGuardia for the one o’clock to Edgartown. Air New England has a one o’clock, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He’d taken that flight a number of times.

  “I’ll be on it,” Norma promised brightly and gave him a hug, a punctuation to end any chance of disappointment.

  “Better not,” Gainer told her. “It’s only okay for them to break their rules.” He meant their rule about coming back. A carrier was supposed to stay over for a reasonable length of time, a week at least, so as not to be obviously shuttling. Norma had always abided by it, supporting the appearance that her trips were for L. E. Horton legitimate business. And recently her stays in Zurich had been longer, two weeks to a month.

  “They shouldn’t mind this once,” she said. “Besides, I’ll have a good excuse ready if it’s ever brought up.”

  But he talked her out of it, told her they’d celebrate twice as much sometime soon, she should just make the carry as she normally would. Please?

  She seemed both sorry and relieved.

  That settled that, Gainer thought, put it out of mind. Still, there was one thing about it that didn’t quite fit. If the bastards at Number 19 had an unexpected carrier problem, surely there were numerous others on their rolls they could have called on. Even given that she was their star, really, why Norma?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SWISS Air Flight 101.

  It was lined up with runway 31 left, held there by its brakes while all four of its engines were being brought to half speed. The number one starboard engine was last to get to half. When all four were stabilized, the Boeing 747 was let go.

  The runway offered eleven thousand feet.

  The plane needed ninety-five hundred of it.

  Up it nosed into the night sky at a positive rate of climb of a thousand feet a minute. At once, as though self-conscious of evidence that it had ever been earth-bound, it hid its landing gears.

  Left turn over Canarsie, old Floyd Bennett field. Under the charge of Kennedy departure control. Left again over the ocean just south of the Long Island shoreline. The next checkpoint was Hampton, then would come Nantucket Island. Boston center control assumed responsibility at twenty-three thousand feet.

  Norma was in the raised spine of the jet, the upper forward area that sets off the conformation of a 747. Originally that overhead section had been a lounge for first class passengers. Now it was put to profitable use, installed with special reclining seats the airlines called “slumberettes.” Available for sixty dollars above first class fare, the seats could be let down to nearly a horizontal position, providing plenty of room for a passenger to stretch out and snooze. The atmosphere and attitude up there were as conducive as possible to sleeping. No movie. Dinner only if requested. Eyeshades, extra pillows and blankets.

  Even before the plane leveled off to cruise, Norma was snuggled down for the short night. Her stocking feet warm in Swiss Air booties and the music system providing faint Debussy preludes.

  Eyes shut, her mind chose first her carry for its subject. The three million dollars contained in her thirty inch suitcase. As always, there hadn’t been a hitch getting it out of the States. When the limousine brought her to the curb at the International Departures Building, a skycap was immediately there to tend to her baggage. The same black skycap who had been there for her numerous times before. Perhaps that was coincidence but Norma thought not. For a moment at curbside, while the skycap was tagging her three bags, checking them directly through to her flight, her eyes and his had caught in what seemed a subtle, conspiratorial exchange. Norma was almost certain of it. She’d been told there were people to look out for her along the way, and after so many carries she ought to be able to determine who they were. What, she wondered, would have been the skycap’s reaction if she’d hyphenated their connection with a pertinent remark? Probably he would have gone on tagging and scribbling as though he hadn’t heard. That would have been the same as an admission. Anyway, now again, the three million was aboard, the one-hundred and twenty banded packs of hundred dollar notes, two-hundred and fifty hundreds to each pack, was somewhere in the belly of this giant and the most crucial half of her job was done.

  A pleasant Debussy phrase moved her to the t
heme that recently seemed to take over all her other considerations. She lay face up with the airline blanket to her chin, her arms underneath, fingers laced, and her mind ran with it.

  She told herself she should sleep for tomorrow. When she would be held.

  Not contained, but surrounded. Held against that particular length by the pressure of her own willingness. Such a new need, that touching. The hand flat on her back, skimming as though to remove its normal surface, exposing skin far more responsive. Hand cupping her shoulder, fingers traveling one way, then the opposite, circumscribing her breasts, momentarily disappointing the nipples, giving attention to usually neglected places for a long while. Such a new need. She hadn’t known her body until it was discovered for her.

  She should sleep for the tomorrow she was flying to.

  To those particular fingers, the tips tracing the rises and dips of her, repeating their course whenever her breath was made to catch or a grateful sound came from her. Wise fingers. She had cried more than once from the stir, the mercilessness of them. And often, animallike sounds had escaped from where she had them trapped.

  She opened her eyes. Debussy had given way to Schubert, she realized, a symphony for piano that to her honed sensibility at that moment was like fine leaded crystal striking together. She removed the headset from her ears, let it drop beside her seat. Perhaps she should have some wine.

  Two hours out.

  The 747 was over Sable Island, Newfoundland, its final checkpoint this side of the Atlantic. It reported to Oceanic control and proceeded eastward as directed on North Atlantic track three.

  The trouble in number one starboard engine was not immediately apparent. A defect had developed in the scavenge return line leading from the oil reservoir to the engine. Constant vibration had caused the fitting on that line to crystallize and crack, allowing oil to leak. The crack had become worse, and now oil flamed out into the slipstream. The oil pressure dropped below thirty pounds per square inch, and that electronically lighted up the corresponding low pressure warning signal on the flight engineer’s panel. When the oil pressure continued to drop, the number one starboard engine was shut down.

  The plane descended to twenty thousand feet. It was already banking in a full turn when the announcement came over the intercom system that it was returning to Kennedy. With reduced power and prevailing westerly headwinds the return took nearly three hours. The time was straight up three A.M. when the 747 docked and the passengers were let off to wait in the International Departure Lounge.

  Norma telephoned a Zurich number but it was busy. Moments later when she tried the number again, no one picked up.

  The plane was repaired right there on the apron. The troubled engine was mobilized with a starter and the oil leak located. The scavenge return line and its fittings were replaced. It only took an hour for the engine to be made right, but just as much time was needed to service and reprovision the airplane, and for a new crew to come aboard.

  At five-ten A.M., New York time, Swiss Air Flight 101 again lifted off for Zurich.

  Again Norma could begin counting the hours.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IN the official atlas of Westchester County, New York, the town of Harrison can be found mainly on page thirty, map ten.

  According to its boundaries, the shape of that township is remarkably penile. Like a flaccid organ of considerable length it hangs between White Plains and Rye and down nearly into Long Island Sound.

  Possibly the surveyor or whoever determined what was to be Harrison had had a roguish sense of humor. It seems somehow more than coincidence that the southern end of the town is rounded off as though a bit swollen and at its very tip is a familiar indentation.

  Purchase Street is like a vein running the shaft of Harrison. It goes north-south for about seven miles.

  Most streets on the map are indicated in common black and white, and the names of many are in such tiny, crammed type that magnification is needed to read them. Purchase Street is outstanding yellow, shown much wider, lettered large enough for easy reading. At least four lanes, and considerable commerce are expected of it. But Purchase Street turns out to be only two regular black-topped lanes minimally shouldered. A typical suburban way with old maples and elms in touch with one another high above. No sidewalks and surely no Exxon stations or Grand Union markets; not even a doctor’s shingle is allowed display.

  Giving prominence to Purchase Street is the force of a pattern, a prevailing tribute to an earlier time when along there all the houses were important houses—twenty, thirty or more rooms on as many acres. Places of such quality and detail they could not be put up today at any price. The fine materials are still available but the craftsmen are gone, along with their patience and conscientiousness. They had no apprentices. Their lines were abruptly ended by greed—the doing of things not nearly so well and as quickly as possible for much more money.

  The houses, their last, are left to stand and speak for them. Especially those situated where Purchase Street is proximate to the Westchester Country Club and farther north where it continues beyond the Hutchinson River Parkway. Anachronistic, these houses that refuse to decay at the current going rate. They require too much heat and help for these times. Many of the people who live in them are caught in them, caught between pride and property taxes. Gatehouses are rented as well as the quarters above ten-car garages. Frontage is sold off with condition of a right-of-way. Orchards, vegetable gardens, even raspberry patches are taken seriously.

  Still, some do not give ground. Wild sumac is not allowed to overgrow their walls and any tumbled-down rock is hefted back into place. The grandchildren of the children of the original fortunes still occupy and oversee that their charge is mowed and pruned, plowed and replanted. The slightest wound, outside or in, is swiftly healed, despite the pain of the price to do so.

  But most of the homes along Purchase Street have changed hands numerous times, and there are those living in them now who had only hoped someday they might. An example is Number 16, a huge Tudor occupied by a recently promoted officer of IBM. Number 18 is a tall, columned Colonial now owned by a marketing executive for General Foods. Across the way, Number 17 is either authentic Mizner or Mediterranean, pale but grand, arches and terra cotta. The man of the family who lives there is quite a ways up at American Tobacco.

  Those Purchase Street neighbors do not see one another, not even from their highest windows, never socially. They have too much in common, and there are forty-some country clubs within a five mile radius.

  Such cultivated insularity suits Number 19.

  Number 19 was constructed in 1906 on a site which at that time was truly country. It was built for a John MacFarlan, whose wealth came from hardware, the making and selling of all the things that made the things to make the things. The house remained MacFarlan until 1925. From then to 1965 it changed hands eight times.

  A man named Gridley bought it in 1965. Paid cash. He was ostensibly in the shipping business, which was high-sounding and ambiguous enough. The letterheads of his business stationery listed offices in New York, San Francisco, and ten foreign seaports. Gridley was only in his late forties when he died suddenly of natural causes in 1970.

  The Number 19 house was never put on the market. Real estate dealers, who watched the daily death notices hoping to get a jump on an estate settlement listing, were told by Gridley’s executors that the house had already been bought. Taxes had been paid on the sale and everything was legal and tidy.

  The buyer was Edwin L. Darrow. He also paid cash. His visible source of income was his law practice. Maritime law. That was, apparently, the explanation for his having been acquainted with Gridley and the reason why he had been able to acquire the house in such short order. Being a maritime attorney was also at once nicely abstruse and substantial. To help matters, Darrow was genuinely a Yale graduate and a member of both the New York and Massachusetts bars. His name appeared as a senior partner of one of the oldest highly regarded law firms in Boston.<
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  Number 19.

  Last, northernmost house on Purchase Street. Its property lines on two sides were adjacent to the Westchester County Airport. Not the airport proper nor any of its runways or hangars but the far outer reaches of airport-owned land, overgrown and serving as a sort of buffer area. If anything, it enhanced the privacy of the house. For further insurance all twenty-seven acres of Number 19 were enclosed by a red brick wall that averaged about eight feet in height.

  The only interruption of the wall gave to an entrance on Purchase Street. Tall gates of iron, elaborately worked. A pair of outer gates, with another identical pair immediately beyond.

  On the left, adjoining those second gates, was the gatehouse, a pleasing two-storied structure that nicely prefaced the substantial style of the estate. From there the paved drive went up, but back and forth so as to nearly neutralize the steepness. Clipped holly hedges lined the drive so high on both sides that anyone coming or going felt somehow irrevocably committed. At the crest a slight drop formed a shoulder for the expanse of level green the imposing main house was situated on.

  Thirty rooms in the style of an eighteenth-century Georgian manor house constructed of brick and limestone. Two and a half stories with a pitched roof of silvery blue slate from which dormers stood out like so many identically raised eyebrows. Numerous chimneys capped by copper turned green. Spacious upper terraces, balustrades. Ivy not really allowed to have its own way up the brick wall. Rather, carefully disciplined to appear unrestrained, as did the trees, the lindens and elms. The grounds, every foot, were conscientiously attended to, the grass of the wide lawns kept taller-bladed, plushy, textured with white clover so bees were always working in it.

  The house was designed in the shape of an extended uppercase letter H with the bottom half of its first vertical leg missing. So, the north wing was only half a wing. That asymmetry enhanced the structure, helped it appear not so formal, somehow more hospitable.